Most of this seems pretty good stuff, but I do hope atheists wouldn't use the Pi argument.
The reason is that the case for it being a contradiction is rather weak, depending on the passage actually using exact measurements rather than approximations, and given that the society that wrote those texts didn't seem to use exact measures, ("cubit" itself being rather losely defined as the length from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger, if I remember correctly) the appologist can make a pretty legitimate argument that the measures given were approximate, and not exact ot such a degree as the argument would demand.
As such, I find it a weak argument that may end up doing more harm to your cause than good - because appologists love to pick a few easy, low hanging fruit from such lists of contradictions pointed out by atheists, use those as examples to their flock of how "strained" and "easily countered" the atheist arguments are, while ignoring all the most striking, most clear contradictions.
A good resource is the iron charriots wiki. Here's what they have to say about the Pi argument:
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Pi
God has some explaining to do.
Seriously, and don't tell me it's all just "metaphorical" because then other things in the bible may just as well be metaphors.
The bible was also supposed to be written by man through God, if it were written by man by himself why would we follow the bible?
THE EARTH IS FLAT:
"The earth takes shape like clay under a seal." (Job 38:14)
Clay when stamped with a seal is not rounded into a ball, but flattened, like the clay seal found in Israel in 1994.
"take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it" (Job 38:12-13)
How could the earth be held by its "edges"? A sphere has no edges.
"[T]he devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them" (Matthew 4:1-12)
Certainly, if the earth were flat, standing atop "an exceedingly high mountain" would allow Jesus to see the whole earth, but there is no mountain tall enough to allow him to see the other side of a spherical earth. At most, one hemisphere would be seen, but not the other.
"The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth; and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth." (Daniel 4:10-11)
The "whole" earth? No matter how tall the tree was, even if it was only a dream, it would not have been visible from the other side of the earth.
"To whom then will ye liken God? ....It is he that sitteth upon the circle (chuwg) of the earth" (Isaiah 40:18-23)
The Hebrew word used in scripture for "circle" in the verse above is chuwg. If the Bible writer had meant for us to believe that "circle of the earth" meant that the earth was round, the writer would have used the Hebrew word for "ball," which is duwr. The fact that Isaiah didn't use duwr shows that he wasn't trying to tell us the earth was like a ball.
Everyone knew what a "circle" was in those times; it meant the same then as it means today. A circle is a flat shape while a sphere is a round one.
BATS ARE BIRDS:
And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls... And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat. (Lev. 11:13, 19)
Is there a biological error here? Aren't bats mammals, not birds?
Actually, classification of animals and things was made by different means: function or form. In this case, the word we render birds means simply "owner of a wing", the word being 'owph, which comes from a root word which means to cover or to fly. But KJV chose "bird" and apparently no one sees a need to change it -- though they ought to.
HARES CHEW CUD:
And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you. (Lev. 11:6)
Hares (or some say rabbits, but "hare" is what is in mind here) are not ruminants; they practice refection. Refection is a process in which animals like hares eat their own dung mixed with undigested material. The Hebrew does not use the word for "dung". Therefore this passage is wrong. Contrast this with what cows and some other animals do, rumination, which is what we moderns call "chewing the cud." They regurgiate partially digested food in little clumps called cuds, and chew it a little more after while mixing it with saliva.
Here is the Hebrew word for "cud" - gerah, the cud (as scraping the throat): - cud.
THE SKY IS A SOLID STRUCTURE:
And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. (Genesis 1:6-8)
The word "firmament" implies a solid material, coming from the Latin word "firmamentum."
It also says that there is water above the skies (heaven), sky refers to Earth's atmosphere. There is no water above the sky, only within it.
THE EARTH IS SUSPENDED BY SPACE PILLARS:
"He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble." (Job 9:6)
We now know that no, the Earth does NOT have pillars.
"He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." (Psalm 104:5)
Nor does it have "foundations"
LIGHT AND PLANTS CREATED BEFORE THE SUN:
- "And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." (Genesis 1:3-5)
- "Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day." (Genesis 1:11-13)
- "And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day." (Genesis 1:14-19)
Plants need sunlight in order to make chlorophyll. There is no light without the sun, the sun is the Earth's only natural form of light. It also says that the moon is a light, which it's not.
PI EQUALS 3:
"And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." (1 Kings 7:23)
The term “sea” here refers to a large circular tank, but that is not the interesting part. Rather, it is the part about the tank being ten cubits across and thirty in circuferemce. Every high school geometry student knows that the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter gives you pi. In this case, we have a cricumference of 30 and a diameter of 10. That implies that pi equals three. But, actually, pi doesn't equal three.
Thus, what is being described here is a logical impossibility. Even God can't construct a circle with a diameter of ten and a circumference of thirty, just like He can't build a rock so heavy even He can't lift it.
Pi equals about 3.141592
THE SUN MOVES AROUND THE EARTH:
"He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." (Psalm 104:5)
The Earth moves around the sun.
"The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises." (Ecclesiastes 1:5)
The sun itself does not move, rather the Earth moves around the sun. To someone who has not seen beyond their skies this would be obvious interpretation.
"And the sun stood still...So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day." (Joshua 10:13 )
his verse reports that the sun stood still so Joshua could finish all of his killing before darkness came. This implies that the sun had to have been moving in the first place in order for it to in any way come to a stop.